Hur väljer människor vem de ska hjälpa? Hur sinnesstämning och identifierbarhet påverkar beslutstagande i fördelningsdilemman

Sammanfattning: How and who do people choose to help? And who does one help if one has the opportunity to choose between two alternatives? To help is not all about rational considerations. There are a number of psychological aspects which affect how people choose to help: how the victim is presented or what mood the potential actor is in. These two factors are the essences of this study that intended to explore how identifiability and mood affect people’s reasoning about distribution dilemmas. In a survey study the participants were primed into two different moods and asked to choose between which of two charity options they would like to help. The study showed that mood and identifiability affected the participants’ choices to a certain extent. Emotionally primed participants preferred the short-term option to a large extent whilst the calculating primed preferred the long-term option. However, this difference revealed itself only when the short-term option where presented as an unidentified victim and not when presented as an identified victim. The result brings up questions regarding how the level of identifiability truly affects the willingness to help and how the design of distribution dilemmas can lead to psychological reactance.